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Saturday, 28 February 2015

In my short time of compulsively watching as many films as I
do, and even shorter time of reviewing them for public consumption, I feel I have
covered a wide spectrum of films in that time that I have given a wide spectrum
of reactions to. However, no matter what film I looked at, no matter how
out-of-my-depth I may have been concerning the genre, country of origin or
subject matter, I always prided myself on being able to articulate exactly why
I felt the way I did about each one of them. Sure, I’ve had films that were
difficult for me to pin down: Birdman took me a while to really collect my
thoughts about, 12 Years A Slave had me hesitating because of peer pressure and
how much the rest of the world seemed to love it and God’s Not Dead had to be
severely edited from the reams of notes I wrote on it so as to not piss off every religious group under the sun, or rather out of paranoia that that would happen. Today, however, I think I have found
a film to top them all in that regard. This is Zhong Kui: Snow Girl And The
Dark Crystal.

The plot: Zhong Kui (Chen Kun) is a demon hunter under the
tutelage of the deity Zhang Daoxian (Winston Chao). He is tasked by Zhang to
steal the Dark Crystal, the receptacle for all the souls taken by demons, from
Hell and the Demon King tasks Snow Girl (Li Bingbing) and a group of seductive
female demons to get it back from the city of Hu where it is now being kept. As
the two sides clash, an epic battle begins that will decide the fate of Earth,
Heaven and Hell.

The first thing that comes to mind when bringing up this
film, and indeed the first thing that most audience members will notice, is the
CGI on display here. Put simply, it looks like it was all pulled straight out
of sixth-generation games that should be on the PS3 or Xbox 360; it’s at that
weird midway point where it looks fine, but it is still quite obviously CGI.
Another midway point the CGI work exists in, at least when it comes to Zhong
Kui’s demonic form is, one that has become the land most dare not tread: The
midway point between realistic and fake that is the uncanny valley. The motion
capture, particularly for the face, is unnerving like only uncanny valley
dwellers can manage. Snow Girl’s demonic form has this but to a far lesser
extent since the character design for her looks more humanoid than strictly
human. Zhong Kui, on the other hand, looks like a more defined version of the
Dark Prince from Prince Of Persia: The Two Thrones, right down to a remarkably
similar looking weapon; it may look good in the game, but it looks surprisingly out
of place in a live-action film.

This video game aesthetic extends beyond the effects and
even gets into the action scenes as well: aside from one or two setpieces, the
action beats are entirely done in CGI with a few real sets here and there. They
are extremely lame as a result, all looking floaty and too overblown to really
get invested in. The only time when I actually found myself properly getting
into a fight scene was near the end when Zhang finally got a chance to fight
that didn’t involve him poofing into clouds of gold dust the entire time.
Unfortunately, that was only because the green screen work on him was hideous. I’ve
ranted at length about bad screening before, with movies like The Legend Of
Hercules and I, Frankenstein, but this doesn’t so much take the biscuit as much
as it holds Arnott’s hostage for its recipes. Every shot with Winston Chao
on-screen during that fight looks like the 21st century’s answer to
the rear-projecting in Puma Man; seriously, it looks that bad. My jaw visibly dropped and hung low while watching this
scene, easily the biggest reaction it managed to get out of me for its
duration.

As a means of clawing my way out of the mire of negativity
this film has thrown me into, I find myself looking back on the musical score
with a lot of fondness. Composer Javier Navarrete, whom I mainly remember for creating
the achingly beautiful music for Pan’s Labyrinth, brings some of his best for
this film with a great mixture of soaring and delicate orchestration that add a
lot of oomph to their accompanying scenes. This film’s main showcase for why
this soundtrack is as good as it is is during the dancing sequence where Snow
Girl and her troupe are performing; the instrumentation and rather angelic
singing combine with the graceful movements of the dancers to create something
genuinely beautiful to watch. However, this film is unfortunately another in a
long list of lackluster films that Navarrete has worked on, continuing the
tradition of his music being one of the best parts of their respective films,
if not the best.

And now we reach the elephant in the room:
Thanks to this film, Winter’s Tale has a competitor for the most
incomprehensible film I’ve seen since I started criticizing films as much as I
do these days. Not to say that this film is as pants-on-head stupid as Winter’s
Tale was, but they both share a similar problem in that there is a rather large
amount of the plot that isn’t explained properly. I mentioned how this film
feels like it took a lot of inspiration from the video game medium and that
extends to the basic plot, right down to the mentor heel-turn that has become a
cliché for many, many years at this point. Although, to be fair, the scene
detailing said heel-turn is one of the other big highlights for the film as
Chao and Kun’s blocking make for a very engaging scene, even if the details
surrounding it are embarrassingly disjointed. There is a very specific
sensation to describe how the script for this comes across: it’s as if the six
writers behind the script (too many cooks and all that) originally wrote it as a trilogy of films, then
decided to condense it down to a single film by taking miscellaneous pages from
all three and mashing them together, inexplicably ending on where the first
film would have ended just in case. The biggest, or rather the most obvious,
offender on these grounds is the romantic subplot between Zhong and Snow Girl.
Their relationship is primarily developed through flashbacks that look like
recaps of a previous non-existent film, leading to a lot of fruitless searching
online for a predecessor film to this one, and even then the subplot as a whole
takes a backseat to the aforementioned weaksauce action scenes. It’s less like
a drive-by romance and more like a back-alley-stabbing romance, where there isn’t
even a chance of seeing where it came from.

All in all… actually, I’m not even sure of how to sum this
up. The action scenes are dull and crammed full of bizarre-looking CGI, the
score is amazingly good, the acting is okay but nothing to write home about and
the plot induces head-scratching that will draw blood before too long. This
will probably go down as the film that was the most difficult for me to write a
review for, seeing as how much I was racking my brain trying to articulate what
I thought about this film; I found it that
baffling. I’m ranking it lower than The Quarantine Hauntings, as although that
film was crap, it was at least crap that I could follow without as much issue.
However, it didn’t give me the rather crushing feeling of disappointment that I got from 50 Shades Of Grey, so it gets the spot just above that.

Friday, 20 February 2015

Well, after the essay I wrote about Fifty Shades Of Fucked
Up, I figured I’d follow it up with something a little easier to digest. So
here I am talking about a film that nearly kinda maybe could have started a
world war… possibly. Yeah, there’s a fair bit of background info to spool through before
even getting into the film proper this time round. When you’re dealing with a
film centered on the assassination of the leader of a foreign nation, it’d be a
miracle if there wasn’t some form of
backlash against the film but that’s just the start of it. Between North
Korea’s UN ambassador declaring the film as “sponsoring terrorism” and “an act
of war”, the hacking of Sony Entertainment’s networks by the Guardians of Peace
and subsequent leaking of several films along with certain sensitive
information, and the reaction to all this that nearly ended up with the film
not being released at all, I don’t know whether to call this the greatest
marketing ploy ever or an awesome attempt at creating a Homefront LARPing session. Of course, there’s also the possibility that all of
this media furor surrounding the film could end up overshadowing it and
creating a lot of build-up for what might be a so-so comedy. Only one way to
find out: This is The Interview.

The plot: After discovering that Kim Jong-un (Randal Park)
is a fan of their show, talk show host Dave Skylark (James Franco) and his best
friend and producer Aaron Rapoport (Seth Rogen) arrange for an exclusive
interview with the notorious dictator. They are soon contacted by CIA agent
Lacey (Lizzy Caplan) and asked to assassinate Kim in order to install a new
leader, as they are the only ones who can get close enough to him to do it.

There are a great many things that we do in the face of
those we fear: Fight them head-on, try to bargain with them, cry like a child
who just discovered Santa’s bloody corpse; take your pick. One of the bigger
ones, especially in the world of entertainment, is to mock the ever-loving hell
out of it. In the grand tradition of films like Team America: World Police,
this is a film meant to grasp onto the fear that a lot of the Western world has
for the man currently running North Korea and wring its collar for the comedy
in its pockets. Early on, there’s a heavily tongue-in-cheek “interview” with
Eminem coming out of the closet where Em explains that his homophobic, sexist,
racist and otherwise non-PC lyrics were born out of a certain fear he had of
those subjects. This sets the tone for the rest of the film, where the writers
and actors have some fun poking the red hornet’s nest to bring a bit of levity
to the situation while also bringing up some valid talking points… or, at
least, that’s what it tries to do.

Sure, the film certainly has some pretty decent ideas, like
satirizing the media bias the West has towards reporting North Korean news and occasional fabrication (Why we ever thought this was true is anyone's guess), the dictator still
enjoying American entertainment despite ideological differences (There’s a
reason Hitler and Chaplin had the same facial hair… and Chaplin had it first)
and even bringing up that, because real world news can get that bleak and
depressing at times, maybe there really is
a need for tabloid celebrity news outlets for a bit of light entertainment.
However, there is also the problem that the writing doesn’t really seem to know
what it’s doing for the most part; it doesn’t have a firm enough grasp on what it brings up to really work with them
properly. It may make fun of Western coverage of NK but, ultimately, it takes
the safe route and sticks with the global impression that Kim is insane… which
is actually a lot more boring than the alternative, where Kim is simply
misunderstood and doing his best to fill his father’s shoes, despite being made
leader at such a young age. However accurate that statement may be, I don’t know
nor am I completely willing to test it, but then again this is a film where a
talk show host sets out to kill a dictator; realism has already gone on
vacation.

Speaking of said talk show host, regardless of whatever
half-baked political messages are between the lines of the script, he is easily
the biggest problem with this film. While Seth Rogen does very well as the
straight man, James Franco gives Harvey Levin a run for his money on the
obnoxious stakes. I do not, and doubt I ever will, understand the school of
comedy that thinks that just being annoying in it of itself is hilarious and
this film does nothing to change that stance. Dave Skylark is made up of a few
running gags, none of which really land; The most egregious being that whenever
he does something stupid (which is almost everything he does in this film), Rapoport and several other characters explain to him
exactly why it was stupid. That, and the numerous pointless Lord of The Rings analogies. While the latter is just
annoying, the former is another fixture on the trophy shelf of this film’s
failings. For the majority of the film, Skylark is (rightly so) told off for
being a complete moron, but then when the climax comes along the film does a
complete 180 and almost everything he has been corrected on is proven right; if
it’s a joke, it falls flatter than everything else; if it’s meant to prove a
point, it is completely lost on me. Not quite as baffling (or as irritating) as
the countless times that they point out when someone is “honey-potting” or
“honey-dicking” someone else, but it’s still up there.

All in all, this is most certainly a case of the hype
outweighing the end result. While the comedy has its moments, including a
reference to Salo of all things, the soundtrack is decent with the inclusion of a damn good song from South Korean rapper Yoon Mi-Rae (that was apparently unlicensed; well done, boneheads) and there
are definitely some neat ideas under the surface, the writing is way too
muddled to really capitalize on any of it. It’s not terrible but it’s not all
that great either; it’s a mess but it’s at least admirable that it tried a lot
more than other comedies tend to do these days. It’s better than Mortdecai, as
it feels like the filmmakers actually gave a damn here, but it underperforms
next to Dumb And Dumber To, where the actors had better comedic timing and
there was a moment of genuine cleverness at the end. As a means of checking out
what the fuss has been about or if you’re really into Rogen or Franco’s other
films, it’s worth a rental, but otherwise you wouldn’t be missing much by
skipping this one.

Monday, 16 February 2015

It seems like there’s a lot of need in the world of internet
criticism to find the next Twilight; a romantic film or series of films that
can capture the cynical zeitgeist and bring us so many reiterations of “This is
so bad, it’s hilarious” that we inevitably grow tired of it in record time. We’ve
had a couple of flashes in the pan in recent years, like The Host and a myriad of other YA adaptations, but nothing
has really latched on with audiences yet or at least in the same way Twilight
did. Well, when news that the most successful Twilight fanfiction of all time
(no, seriously, that’s what it started out as) was getting a film adaptation,
there was much frothing at the mouth that this might be just what the doctor
ordered. But how does it actually turn out? This is Fifty Shades Of Grey.

The plot: Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson), after
interviewing him for her college newspaper, becomes infatuated with young multimillionaire
Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). As their relationship intensifies, Christian
begins to reveal the darker sides of his personality as well as his sexuality,
asking Anastasia to follow him down this path and become his submissive.
Anastasia must decide if her love for Christian warrants her becoming what he
wants of her, or if their relationship must end.

I am going to go the safe route and assume that the majority
of my readers have enough going on in their lives to not have read the original
book. As such, I will reserve my thoughts on adaptation for later on and
instead focus as best I can on this film as it stands, and what better way to
start than with our two leads Dakota and Jamie. Their apparent backstage
dislike for each other has been highly publicized at this point, with numerous
articles and interviews showing off just how awkward these two around each
other in real life. It should come as no surprise then, given this information,
that they have the on-screen chemistry of two pieces of A4 paper: The supposed
sizzling romance between these two is non-existent and the fact that neither
actor is capable of even… you know, acting
like they can stand each other’s company is a big part of that. It doesn’t help
that their relationship is classic drive-by “we need to set this up as quickly
as possible” style of development, which makes Christian’s actions ring even
more like those of a possessive stalker given how little time is given for
actual attraction to occur on-screen. Of course, that’s not exactly difficult
to do given how he is written in the first place, but we’ll get to that in due
time.

So, the actors are no good at pretending to be into each
other. But how are they on their own terms? Well, the acting is extremely weak
for the most part overall, which I consider to be more of a fault of the script
than the actors because they actually fulfill their roles well enough… it’s just
that their roles are exceptionally poorly written. Anastasia is naïve to the
point of acting like she is still in high school despite evidence to the contrary
and Dakota plays her in just that way. Christian is supposed to be sexy but
instead comes across as creepy a lot of the time and James does that remarkably
well. The rest of the actors are pretty much just cyphers and aren’t even worth
mentioning, all except for one: Jennifer Ehle, who plays Anastasia’s mother, is
appalling in this movie. She’s given a lot of rather jocular lines, a big
mistake considering she speaks them as if she is still learning how to speak
fluent English and hasn’t gotten inflections down yet.

As much as it pains me to admit, some of the sex scenes here
have a certain sensuality to them that helps the idea of BDSM that the story is
centered around. However, this doesn’t
mean that they come across as sexy in any way, shape or form. Now, rather than
step into unknown territory and talk about BDSM as if I know thing one about
it, I’ll instead stick to something that I and many other people who frequent
the Internet are a little too
familiar with: Porn. There’s a reason why porn plots are as weak as they are, and it
isn’t just because the sex is the
main focus and what leads into it doesn’t ultimately matter so why put effort
into it? It’s also so that they can avoid putting any unneeded or potentially
uncomfortable context to the sex scenes that could in any way hinder the
enjoyment for the viewer, sticking solely to details that appeal specifically
to certain fetishes. Put simply, it is designed to be consequence-free, something
that’s a lot easier when you don’t give it any room in which to have consequences for all the horizontal
jogging that goes on. Context is precisely why these sex scenes aren’t in the
least bit erotic; in the lead-up to them, we see Christian being a controlling,
abusive person who is solely out for his own satisfaction. I immediately feel
bad for picking on The Wedding Ringer for similar reasons because at least there that was all in subtext that I had
to read into. Here, it’s splayed out on the screen for all to see. A lot of
other critics have unfavourably compared this to 2002’s Secretary and while I’d
rather avoid that dead horse of an argument, I will say that one of the key
reasons why that film worked where this one doesn’t is a brain-numbingly simple
concept: Consent. Both parties in Secretary actively want the arrangement and
both derive pleasure from what goes on. Here, Anastasia is pressured into
agreeing to it because it’s the only way she can be with Christian, even if she
doesn’t get enjoyment out of it on her own terms. As much bile has been thrown
on Twilight over the last several years, at least both parties actually wanted
to be together and weren’t being forced into it… for the most part, when Edward
wasn’t distancing himself from Bella for no good reason but that’s a whole
other story.

The soundtrack for this is actually really good and
surprisingly classy, given the subject matter. We have a lot of smoky and
seductive numbers, like Annie Lennox’s cover of I Put A Spell On You that opens
the film and a slowed-down remix of Beyoncé’s Crazy In Love that I find myself
liking better than the original, a feat considering I really like that song to
begin with. We also have Ellie Goulding, Sia and The Weeknd throwing their
vocal hats into the ring with songs that add to the sexual bewitchment theme of
the soundtrack, along with the classic Frank Sinatra rendition of Witchcraft
which is also the only song on the soundtrack that actually appeared in the
novel. A wise move to stick with just that one, since I doubt that Kings Of
Leon’s Sex On Fire would have worked as well in this rendition of the story.

Now for the “fun” part: How does this film compare to the
original book? Well, given how so many films these days are adapted from other
sources, I’ve made the conscious effort not to actively go out and read
everything that the films I see are based on; I simply don’t have enough time
for it. This is a big exception, however, as I was kind of curious about what
all the fuss was about and thought this was the perfect excuse. Put simply, I
now have a better understanding of the nature of BDSM having read through it.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, the book also mangles what it actually is, even worse
than the film does, but I can now properly visualize an experience that is
painful but that also brings a certain level of enjoyment to it; my experience
of reading the book in a nutshell. The prose is absolutely ludicrous, the sex
scenes range from bland to the beast with a billion nopes and the sexual
politics are positively infuriating; if it wasn’t making me slam my face into
the book several times out of sheer frustration, it was making me laugh out of
just how awful it was. Now, to the film’s credit, they made the wise decision
to cut out a lot of the more aggravating parts of the source material: No rape
scenes, no sex scenes involving bloodplay, no moments where Anastasia is
needlessly antagonizing the known control freak, save for one instance. Not only
that, the film managed to improve one
particular scene from the book where Christian and Anastasia are discussing the
dominant/submissive contract that Christian has drawn up; it got a couple of
cheap laughs because sex is never not funny, but it showed Anastasia exerting a
certain level of control in the relationship, an added (although kind of
useless) line that helps Christian not look as much like a controlling prick
and, overall, the execution of the scene is very well-handled considering the
original had all this happen solely through email communique.

Unfortunately, they also made a rather misguided decision and cut out a lot of the funnier parts (intentional or otherwise) from the
film as well. The original was filled with a lot of weird cutaway gags that
feel reminiscent of something I’d see in anime involving her subconscious and ‘inner
goddess’ doing weird symbolic things in Anastasia’s head, something that never
ceased to make me giggle regardless of the context. There were also some
sprinklings of self-awareness throughout that gave it the air that it was at
least partially aware of how silly it was, making it come across more as an
offbeat romantic comedy (at times) rather than a serious romantic drama. All of
that is cut, leaving us with a film that is meant to be dark, sensual and
something to be taken seriously… which never happens. What’s worse is that the
few funny moments that are kept in,
most of which are intentionally meant to be so, are delivered so straight-faced
and stilted that they destroy whatever laughs can be gotten from, even when it
isn’t intended; it’s like if someone made a dramatic remake of an Ed Wood
movie. It’s that awkward that when the line of dialogue that gives the
book/film its name happens, where Christian says that he’s “fifty shades of
fucked up”, it’s even more jarring that it was even left in in the first place
than it is in the actual book. Actually, because of how condensed the story is
here as opposed to the book, a lot of the story feels jarring, most of all the
ending which even in the original didn’t make much sense in terms of character
action but here it is absolutely baffling and makes for one of the disjointed
and rushed endings of the last few years.

I’ve seen quite a few names for directors who were also in
line to helm this movie, like Breaking Dawn director Bill Condon and one of my
favourite filmmakers Steven Soderbergh, and while I doubt Soderbergh would have
done much better unless he just pulled a Kubrick in The Shining on this one, Bill
Condon could have easily made this into a more faithful adaptation and kept it
just as hilariously bad while leaving in only a few of the annoying moments.
What this leaves us with is a bad film but not even one that’s bad in any of
the fun ways; instead, one that’s bad in all the dull and disappointing ways.
Yes, this film managed to make me disappointed about an adaptation of a book I
don’t even legitimately like to begin with.

All in all… Jesus Christ, have I really written that much about this nothing of a movie?
Okay, I’ll summarize as best I can: The acting is dull, the writing is stupid
but not even laughably so, or at least enough to make sitting through it all
worth it, the sex scenes are too clinical and riddled with bad lead-up to be
titillating in any way and the story is only slightly less vexing than the
original text. In the words of said original text, “That was about as
emotionally enriching as cotton candy is nutritious.” It’s that rare kind of
film that manages to be worse than the already awful text solely out of not
being bad enough and going for mediocrity instead. It’s worse than The Quarantine Hauntings, as at least that film had potential to be legitimately
good that it tried to capitalize on,
but it’s only just better than The Wedding Ringer because this managed to make me laugh once or twice.

Saturday, 14 February 2015

Whenever news hits that a new zombie film is getting
released, the majority of audiences will no doubt be rolling their eyes at the
mere idea of yet another look into the living dead to add to the pile. Sure,
there are definite classics to come out of the genre like Night Of The Living
Dead (either version written by Romero), 28 Days Later, the Evil Dead trilogy,
Shaun Of The Dead, Braindead, Zombieland, the current phenomenon that is AMC’s
The Walking Dead, not to mention my favourite movie of all time Planet Terror.
However, with the genre now being more prevalent than ever, there is the
unfortunate side-effect of over-saturation; it’s difficult to bring anything new
to audiences after all that we've seen. Not only that, a lot of attempts to really push
the boundaries of the genre like the gay necrophilic porno Otto, or Up With
Dead People or the heavily misguided romantic comedy Warm Bodies, end up pretty
badly. So, with all that said and done, how does this Australian-produced
zombie film hold up? This is Wyrmwood: Road Of The Dead.

The plot: Barry (Jay Gallagher) is a mechanic whose life is
shattered when the zombie apocalypse claims both his wife and daughter. When
his sister Brooke (Bianca Bradey) is kidnapped by an insane doctor (Berryn
Schwerdt) and his military bodyguards, Barry and two fellow survivors Benny
(Leon Burchill) and Frank (Keith Agius) set out to get her back in their modded
car that was bypasses now-useless regular fuel for a more alternative source:
Zombie breath.

Yep, I think we’ve got our hook for individuality right
there: Cars fueled on the breath of zombies. This film was grown out the
directors’ love for Evil Dead, as well as how zombie films can be made on the cheap,
and that kind of love is very evident as this is a film that feels like it was
birthed from many drunken watchings of horror movie marathons. That said,
though, this might be one of the least derivative-feeling zombie films I’ve
seen in a long time. The film, creatively speaking, starts out with a fairly
basic standing point of having zombies that breathe out methane, or meth-head
zombies as I have taken to calling them. From there, the writers come up with
some pretty neat ideas surrounding them, adding on to both the material they’ve
“stolen from other films” (The director’s own words here) as well as the very Mad
Max-esque emphasis on car culture: Explanations on fast zombies, night-time ferocity,
the aforementioned zombie breath fueled car, not to mention… actually, this
last one I won’t mention in full
because it is well and truly something to experience for yourself. I’ll just put
it like this: Something tells me that these guys have played a bit of Left 4
Dead. There’s also a certain deft hand at work here when it comes to a
particular sticking point when it comes to most zombie films: The big question
of why? Well, in this film, they hybridize the genre conventions of scientific
explanations and metaphysical rationalizations when it comes to explaining how
the plague started and how it works, which feels like a pretty decent bit of mutual
ground concerning fans of the genre.

Now, with that said, the kitchen sink ingenuity on display
here is both the film’s greatest feature and also its greatest flaw: Greatest
feature, because this kind of batshit insanity is exactly what the doctor
ordered when it comes to something to help it stand out from its competitors,
not to mention the surprisingly good execution; greatest flaw, because it seems
that the writers were too focused on creating concepts and not fleshing them
out in-story. I was lucky enough to go to a screening where the filmmakers were
giving a Q&A afterwards and, when fielding a question about the mystery
display of awesome, they freely admitted that even they didn’t know how it was
supposed to work in the film’s universe. Not only that, there are some moments
in the film that feel like they are operating exclusively on Rule Of Cool, even
considering the rest of the film. For example, there is a fist-fighting scene
between Barry and one of the soldiers that exists solely to have a fight scene
to the point where even the characters are admitting it. Then again, this is
the film about meth-head zombie-fueled cars; sometimes, even I start to question whether some films
need my brand of over-analysis.

This is a pretty fun roster of characters we have here.
Barry may be a bit headstrong, considering his genre-dumb habit of hugging
people when they are about to turn, but he knows the reality of the situation
better than a lot of protagonists out there and thankfully avoids the “I don’t
want to shoot him/her” cliché when someone else turns. Jay Gallagher also does
an exceptional job channeling some Bruce Campbell B-grade cheese into the role
that results in a pretty awesome lead that convinces without a single doubt
that this is a guy who could get away with fist-fighting zombies. Benny is
really good here as the comic relief, delivering his No Shit, Sherlock dialogue
just right to get laughs out of some otherwise pretty tense situations. Frank
gets a special commendation not only for adding some real Ocker to the mix but
also for bringing us something that I didn’t even realize I needed to see until
it happened: Ned Kelly zombie-fighting armour. As Aussie as bitching about boat
people, this movie is! Brooke kinda-sorta falls into the damsel in distress
role at first, but as the film progresses she comes into her own and kicks
eight kinds of arse in the action scenes. But by far, the most captivating
character in this film is the psycho doctor. Sure, Berryn Schwerdt may not be
on screen for as much as I would have liked, but the man seems to have studied
every creepy performance in every horror film ever made. This is the kind of
performance only possible through either the kind of method acting that would
give Mike Shiner a raging hard-on or the ingestion of every drug that could
ever be conceived by carbon-based life; or possibly both, I’m not putting
anything past this guy. His creepy yet frightened demeanor, his bondage-side
manner, his love for disco music; every second the good doctor (yeah, he isn’t
given an actual name; he’s just credited as The Doctor) is on screen is golden.

Even considering that this is a partially IndieGogo-funded
film, shot over a three and a half year period, this is a really nice looking
film. Zombie films are often made or broken by their effects, and this film’s
emphasis on practical effects over CGI works a lot in its favour. The gore
effects are very well-handled, making every head-shot and occasional
head-splosion as gruesome as they need to be. Aside from the red stuff, the
rest of the effects work is also well-done, with the make-up on the meth-heads
as well as the visuals for their breath looking ugly in all the right ways. There's also a pretty awesome sequence where a guy is turned into a living matchstick The
cinematography here suffers a bit from Stoned Gremlin Syndrome, given its
fixation on close-ups, but this often works in the film’s favour and creates
befitting tension in some scenes. But hey, even at its worse it’s still better
than The Quarantine Hauntings given how I could actually see what the hell was going on.

All in all, this is an incredibly dumb movie but one that is
fully aware and embraces how stupid it can get, resulting in a very goofy but
very fun splatsticky ride. The acting is good, the characters are enjoyable, the effects
show what can pulled off even with smaller budgets, the extremely offbeat sense
of humour brings major laughs and the originality on display throughout is
amazingly refreshing while still wearing a lot of its influences on its
blood-soaked sleeves. It doesn’t at any point feel like it’s holding back on
us, quite the opposite for the most part, so this goes higher on my list than
The Theory Of Everything, but I still get a bit weepy thinking back on Julianne
Moore in Still Alice every so often so it ranks just below that. It may come
across as an insult when someone recommends a film as something to turn your
brain off and just enjoy, but here that’s exactly what they were going for and
they definitely succeeded. Director Kiah Roache-Turner made mention of some
pretty glorious ideas concerning a possible sequel to this during the Q&A, leading me to say in
no uncertain terms to “Make that fucking movie!” If the day comes
when the meth-heads return to our screens, you better believe I’ll be right
there when it happens.

Thursday, 12 February 2015

I have a certain fascination with actors who are able to
transform themselves for a role. Be it through method, heavy make-up work or
however else, it’s very interesting seeing what an actor is willing to do for
their craft. One of my personal favourite examples of this are Christian Bale
in The Machinist and Batman Begins, where he turned himself into a real-life
Billy Halleck and emaciated himself for the former and then bulked up to play
Batman in the latter. As much as I would hate to be that man’s stomach during
all that, I have to give credit where it’s due for pulling that off. I bring
this all up because, given the majority of posters I saw of this movie before
going to see it myself, this film seems to be banking on the transformative
role Steve Carell has in it. One look at the barely-recognizable Carell and I
can’t say I blame them. But did it pay off? This is Foxcatcher.

The plot: Olympian wrestler Mark Schultz (Channing
Tatum), down on his luck and jealous of his brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo)’s
success, accepts an sponsorship offer from multimillionaire John Du Pont (Steve
Carell) to join his wrestling team Foxcatcher. In the lead-up to the 1988 Seoul
Olympics, Mark trains on Foxcatcher Farms, bonds with the rather eccentric Du
Pont and before too long, Du Pont’s sinister side begins to show itself.

I’ll admit that I was reluctant about this one because
I’ve seen comedic actors go outside of their comfort zones and find much
derision; as much as I think The Number 23 is a decent movie, the fact that
barely anyone else does pretty much ensures that Jim Carrey will never attempt
something like that again. Now, as much as I would love to just come on here
and scream “gimmick casting!” at the top of my lungs, or whatever the typing
equivalent of that is, Carell is legitimately unsettling in this movie. He
pulls a Robin Williams in Law & Order: SVU here with how well he plays
against type, only he manages in a different way to Williams here. He doesn’t
raise his voice so much, unlike Williams did in the most memorable scene of
that episode, but instead he creates a similar feeling of dread around him
through being softer and more quietly intimidating. This is made even more
impressive considering, at least with how he’s written, Du Pont reminds me a
lot of Mr. Burns. The way he uses other people’s success to fuel his own ego,
having people forfeit in competitions against him to the same effect, right
down to the shaky relationship with his mother; at a couple of points, I kept
expecting him to release the hounds on Dave Schultz. However, he doesn’t
descend into Burns-brand cartoonish supervillainy at any point, nor does he
comes across as a caricature by any other means; Carell plays it dead straight
and, through both his performance and rather alienating appearance due to the
make-up work, he pulls it off.

Sure, Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo are great here
also, but make no mistake: This is Carell’s show and he’s making the most of
it. That said, what makes this film work isn’t the actors on their own terms
but rather their interactions with each other and the relationships between the
characters. Mark and Dave’s relationship is remarkably well developed, getting
across the animosity Mark feels for his brother as well as how much he
genuinely cares about him at his core admirably. The scene where Mark loses one
of his more important fights, showing his reaction to it and Dave’s attempts to
console him afterwards, is easily one of the big highlights of the film
dramatically speaking. Actually, if I can renege slightly on a prior statement,
the other big highlight in my opinion is when Mark is seen literally beating
himself up while looking in the mirror; I may rag heavily on 22 Jump Street,
but Channing has come leaps and bounds when it comes to his acting in the last
few years. It shows a lot in his relationship with John Du Pont as well, the
other major relationship at work here. Du Pont treats Mark, basically, like his
own personal golem: Puffing up his sense of self-importance and patriotism to
fulfill Du Pont’s whims, solely to give Du Pont his own feeling of
self-importance by proxy.

Now, with all this said and done, this movie really sounds
like a great bit of crime drama. Unfortunately, one of its greatest strengths
ends up being its greatest weakness. The plot has a very slow build-up to it,
which admittedly works for this kind of story, but it keeps feeling like it’s
going too slowly and too low-key to
keep interest. There is a lot of tension that’s built during the running time
but the space between the more intense moments are that down-tempo that all
that build-up is sapped away before it can capitalize on any real kind of
payoff. When a lot of the plot-important moments occur, like the finale and
what results from it, instead of feeling like a heavy powder keg explosion from
what precedes it, it’s more like a single heartbeat on an otherwise flatlining
EKG; it gets back your interest in the proceedings, but only just.

All in all, this is a very well-written and acted movie
with Steve Carell joining the great shortlist of comedic actors who can
actually accomplish being in a more serious role. This is unfortunate, given
how the film is mostly made up of scenes that played way too subtly to engage
sandwiching a few really great moments. There are the trappings of a great movie
in here, but as it stands it’s just okay. It’s better than The Gambler, since
this has moments of genuine enjoyment that aren’t just out of clinical curiosity,
but it ranks lower than Paper Planes since, as clichéd as the script for that
was, it kept me properly engaged throughout. I’d recommend seeing it if only
for Carell adding some range to his repertoire, but I can’t speak too highly on it overall.

Monday, 9 February 2015

Mark Wahlberg has always struck me as an actor who is
extremely dependent on his directors, given how capable and incapable he can
appear on screen. You give him M. Night Shyamalan and he’ll direct him to be so
wooden that he makes the plastic plants he’s talking to look like the foliage
in Creepshow. On the other end, hand him to someone like Michael Bay and he’ll
get him to emphasize the inherent stupidity of his character and make him scary
and funny in his own right. It’s a bit of a crapshoot, is what I’m saying. So,
in the hands of Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes director Rupert Wyatt, what kind
of Mark Wahlberg do we get here? This is The Gambler.

The plot: Jim Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) is an English
professor with a chronic gambling addiction who has to settle some debts with
gambling den owner Lee (Alvin Ing) and loan shark Neville (Michael K. Williams).
He goes through different avenues to try and pay it off, including borrowing
even more money from his mother (Jessica Lange) and another loan shark (John
Goodman), and gains the attention of his student Amy (Brie Larson) along the
way, all while trying to repay his loans within the next 7 days lest he end up
dead.

Thankfully, we don’t get the stiff and awkward Wahlberg this
time around, to answer our opening question. Jim is characterized here as
over-confident and clever while having a bit of an idiot streak, given his
compulsive gambling, and Wahlberg conveys it well. He carries the stone-cold
poker face during his scenes at the poker table but can dominate the room when
he’s teaching at the college. Actually, his scenes in the classroom are his personal
best in the film because not only does he have the most presence during these
scenes but he also gets the best speeches for them as well. It’s kind of a
thrill watching Jim essentially tear through Anti-Stratfordian belief and the
elitism attached to it by pointing out the exceptional abilities of his own
students, regardless of their socio-economic statuses. That said, he isn’t
mollycoddling in how he does it as he believes that only those with abilities
worthy of exception should even bother with such ventures, referring to his own
middling success in novel-writing. His all-extremes view of the world show
through in his approach to gambling and why he takes the risks that he does,
making him the sort of layered character that I wish I saw more of in modern
cinema. Yes, I know that this is a remake (Of a film I haven’t seen yet, hence
why I’m refraining from any comparisons to it) but my point still stands.

I made brief mention of Wahlberg’s turn in Pain & Gain, and
while he isn’t portraying that level of idiocy this time around he is still
playing a character who makes dumb decisions at times. I bring this up because
this portrayal is aided by the fact that, unlike far too many other films, the
script is aware that Jim’s actions aren’t advisable and instead use that to
build upon his character. Jim’s compulsive gambling isn’t portrayed in a very
special episode way but rather as the actions of someone who with a legitimate
problem that the film doesn’t make a sharpened point of lecturing him about.
Jim is a person who doesn’t know when to hold ‘em or when to fold ‘em, but
there is still a certain preternatural luck that surrounds his character.
Throughout the film, there is a running motif of others trying to prevent Jim
from making bad decisions “for his own protection”, but he refuses to listen
and insists that he knows what he’s doing and how to get out of the debts he
keep racking up. Maybe it’s down to some form of luck or his charisma, but he
keeps managing to convince people to loan him money, be they less reputable
characters or his own mother. Given his line of credit, in that he has none, that
is an impressive feat given how seriously some of these people take such
matters. There’s also some mentions of other forms of gambling that don’t
involve money, like the risks taken in getting into professional sport or
novel-writing, and the ideas presented are interesting but the film could have
benefited from exploring those a bit more than the couple of scenes we actually
get.

So, Wahlberg checks out, how are the rest of the cast?
Mostly just okay, honestly. Brie Larson as Amy is good in her role with some
decent chemistry with Wahlberg; Michael K. Williams works as the intimidating
hustler and Alvin Ing does the minimum required of his typical lead gangster.
The two main highlights in the cast are Jessica Lange as Jim’s mother and John
Goodman as loan shark Frank. Jessica Lange interacts greatly with Wahlberg, not
to mention doing one of the more aggressive bank transactions that I’ve seen.
John Goodman, even with having his best moment spoiled by the trailer, makes
for the only performance here that could (and sometimes does) surpass Wahlberg’s.
The whole ‘fuck you’ speech from the trailer was what drew me to this film in
the first place, but there’s a certain air to it that it gains within the
context of the film, helped in no small part by Goodman’s low and dangerous
tone.

All in all, this is an okay film. Wahlberg is saddled with a
director capable of getting a good performance out of him, combined with an
interestingly written character for him to portray, and the further writing and
supporting cast all work as well. However, in terms of entertainment value,
this works better as a film to be examined and dissected rather than something
to be purely enjoyed. It’s better than Unbroken, as the writing is more uniform
here and works better because of it, but it falls short of Foxcatcher, which
had stronger overall performances from its cast. I don't like this strongly enough to give that big of a recommendation, but I don't object to seeing it in any way.

Sunday, 8 February 2015

It forms a lump of coal in my stomach to admit this, but we
live in a world where statements like this still need to be said: There are
very few things in this world uglier than racism. The actions people will
commit under the flag of protecting one’s own ethnicity against all others can enter
into the truly stomach-churning and, while we have definitely made some
progress beyond our past actions, such things are still an open wound for most
nations if not all. However, it is a common thought in the creative world that our darkest
moments can give birth to our brightest works of art. In the last few years,
especially during Oscar season, we’ve gotten the lion’s share of film exploring
racial themes: 12 Years A Slave, The Butler, Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom, not
to mention the numerous war movies set in World War II like Fury and The Monuments Men; most of which are well-done or at the very least well-intentioned. Given how today’s film falls along similar lines, let’s see just how
bright this turns out if at all; this is Selma.

The plot: Martin Luther King Jr. (David Oyelowo) is an
activist fighting for the right of African Americans to vote, setting up a
march from the Alabama town of Selma to the state capital of Montgomery to
further the cause. With Governor Wallace (Tim Roth) doing all he can to stop
him, President Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) being non-committal in helping him and
racists threatening him, his wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo) and his children, King
is determined to carry out his plan while still holding true to his stance of
non-violence.

Dr. King might well be one of the charismatic leaders in
American history, if not the world, so the actor chosen to play him would have
to be able to imbue the role with the strength and presence needed to sell it.
Enter David Oyelowo, who fills those shoes like they were tailored just for
him. If I was to gauge my expectations of his performance on the last role I
saw him in, which was as Louis Gaines in the well-acted but heavy-handed The Butler,
I would have been gearing myself up for disappointment. However, when Oyelowo
is giving his many speeches on screen, you easily buy that this is a man who
could and did lead thousands of people on those marches. The film is,
admittedly, hurt by the fact that the studios didn’t have the rights to any of
Dr. King’s historical speeches, so unfortunately we don’t get to hear Oyelowo
talking about his dreams. However, Ava DuVernay did a great job at crafting speeches
for him that carry on with the soul of Dr. King’s originals and, while they may
not be as stirring as the real thing, they are just that good that they don’t need to be. Hearing Oyelowo shouting to
his audiences with the passion, intensity and emotional resonance that he does
here, fulfilling his role as a preacher without being preachy, it lights that
fire in the belly like only truly great orators can.

It doesn’t hurt that Oyelowo is assisted by a decent
supporting cast. Tom Wilkinson, regardless of the historical discrepancies surrounding
how he is written here, does well at portraying the political tightrope his
character has to walk whilst having great on-screen chemistry with King. Carmen
Ejogo is written as the supportive wife here, admittedly, but she handles her
dialogue well in showing her support for King’s work but also her worry over
the threats that are resulting from it. Tim Roth is seriously good in his role,
perhaps a little too good as he creates a portrait of a properly despicable
bigot that hides behind deflecting his responsibilities. He is a lot like Kevin
Sorbo in God’s Not Dead in his ability to create disgust in the viewer, and I
mean that as a compliment; as bad as that movie was, Kevin Sorbo did well with
the strawman caricature he was given. It helps that Wallace isn’t written
solely as a cardboard target and Roth never plays him as such, but that itself
is both a good and a bad thing: good, because the role is made believable
through both the dialogue he’s given and the performance he gives; bad, because
the reason why the dialogue is
believable is that it echoes a few too many sentiments that are still being
said today. Nevertheless, he is a great antagonist here and the fact that all
four of these actors are British isn’t even noticeable as they each have the
convincing accents down pat. Of course, there’s also the rather uncomfortable
feeling that comes with the mostly-black cast here; how often do we actually
get to see this many black actors in a single movie nowadays?

Given how Brad Pitt is listed as an executive producer and
Oprah Winfrey is part of the supporting cast, I was initially expecting this to
descend into either soul-crushing but empty morbidity like 12 Years A Slave or
heavy-handed mediocrity like The Butler. Thankfully, this is another one of
those times where my pig-headed pessimism is proven wrong. The racial themes
explored in the writing have an arc and purpose behind them aside from simply
showing scenes of racist (and often self-destructive) behaviour. This is helped
by the wise move to isolate the film’s plot to just one pivotal event, rather
than trying to provide an overview of all of Martin Luther King’s actions which
could have left the film feeling bloated and/or rushed. Instead, the film is
given the opportunity to take its time, build up the sufficient pathos for the
events that take place and, by film’s end, leave the audience on a satisfactory
and triumphant note. The racist acts we see on screen, like the police
brutality of the Bloody Monday march, are unpleasant to put it sickeningly
mildly but they are at least leading to something and a very poignant something
at that. Given the current racial and political climate, specifically in the
wake of the Michael Brown shooting, this film’s message couldn’t have been
better timed.

The soundtrack here fits perfectly with the action on
screen, and you know it has to be good when this is one of the few reviews
where I’m actually taking time out to mention it at all. While it does go for
the Oscar-standard orchestral swells during some dramatic moments, the music
mostly sticks to more folk and bluesy numbers that add greatly to both the
setting and the tone of the film. And then there’s Glory by Common and John
Legend, which not only highlights how timely this film’s release is but also
multiplies the conquering tone of the story through Legend’s piano-driven
instrumentation and Common’s socially conscious lyricism that he has built a
very stable reputation for.

All in all, this isn’t simply a good film. Don’t get me
wrong, it most certainly is a good film given its strong cast lead by a
commanding David Oyelowo, powerful writing and great soundtrack, but this gives
the feeling not just of quality but of actual importance. This isn’t a film
along the lines of 12 Years where the bleak tone chokes the life out of what
works about it; this has a more triumphant note, showing the actions of a man
who wanted his people to be heard as equally as all others. It ranks higher
than Still Alice, as the excellent lead performance here is bolstered by better writing, but it falls short of Wild,
where the production took more risks and made for a more stimulating
experience. This is a must-watch, no doubt about it.

Saturday, 7 February 2015

‘Mark Millar’ and ‘movie adaptation’ have a very odd
relationship with each other: While the films adapted from his work are mostly
good, they take a lot of liberties with the source material. Kick-Ass, through its re-writing of Big Daddy's character, completely
shifted the tone of the film and made it a lot less bleak which actually
worked to the film’s benefit; Wanted, save for the main character’s abilities
and backstory, has pretty much nothing else to do with the original book, a
definite shame given its initial premise. Since Millar and director
Matthew Vaughn struck gold before with Kick-Ass, it would make sense that he
would also bring his book The Secret Service to the big screen. It doesn’t hurt
that Vaughn was co-plotter on the original book as well. This is Kingsman: The
Secret Service.

The plot: Out of respect for an agent that saved his life,
Galahad (Colin Firth) enlists the agent’s son Eggsy (Taron Egerton) as a
recruit in the super-spy organization Kingsman. As Eggsy goes through his training
under the watchful eye of Merlin (Mark Strong), billionaire tech-whiz Mr.
Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) sets a sinister plan in motion that he believes
will save the world.

This is another case like Kick-Ass where Vaughn and Jane
Goldman managed to isolate the best parts of the original comic, improve
upon them and, in turn, surpass its source material. An interesting notion considering that, aside from having a couple
of really good concepts, it is definitely one of Millar’s less engaging works. The writers took an idea at the core of the original, the idea of
the James Bond brand of super spy and his place in the real world, and managed
to inject some superb subtext into it that shows a lot of respect for its forebears. This film is a big sloppy kiss to the cheek of the genre, taking great
jubilation out of sending up the more prevalent clichés of the genre. What
makes this work even better is that it avoids the pitfall that a lot of other
spoof-ish films fall into: Succumbing to the very clichés it’s making fun of.
When this film makes fun of the trope of the villain explaining his plan to the
hero as a means to gloat over his own ‘genius’, it follows through with it along with everything else it pokes fun at and practices the doctrine that it preaches. Beyond flexing its genre-savvy
muscles, the writing also has no qualms with poking the hornet’s nest of
modern-day politics, citing the usual cry of politicians only ever caring about
re-election, as well as a not-so-subtle jab at the more hate-mongering
religious groups out there through a fairly obvious Westboro Baptist proxy. I
don’t know why, but those jokes still
haven’t gotten old yet.

The cast here all do a fantastic job playing these very animated
characters. Colin Firth oozes class from every pore with his portrayal of Galahad, spouting off his cheesy and serious line with equal Connery-brand confidence
that sells them; I doubt anyone else could make a McDonald’s-based one-liner
sound as good as he does here. Taron Egarton, despite Firth getting top billing
for name recognition I'm assuming, has the kind of presence and charisma of a star
in the making, playing Eggsy’s chav and posh sides with equal ease. Mark Strong
is very engaging as the tough but well-meaning Merlin, keeping up the rest of
the cast in terms of wit and badassery and on occasion surpassing them. Michael Caine, who could probably have played this role in his sleep and still made it work, does well in his authoritative role as Kingsman's leader Arthur.
Hanna Alström, despite her relatively smaller role in this film, plays a large
part in one of the funniest exchanges in the whole movie and why it worked as well as it did. Sofia Boutella, playing the villain's right-hand henchwoman Gazelle, pulls off the physicality of her role with ease and puts her previous experience as a dancer to surprisingly good effect in the fight scenes. Sophie Cookson, playing what could have easily devolved into a stock romantic interest with Roxy, holds her own amongst the others with spunk to spare. To round it off, Sam Jackson as Valentine lives up to one of the film’s
quips about how the old Bond flicks were only ever as good as their villain
with a certain nuance missing from a lot of antagonists in films of late, not
to mention managing to make a very pronounced lisp not sound forced and work as part of the
character.

Despite my discussion of the effort put into the writing and
paying its respects to the spy films of old, this is still another example of
Vaughn’s bombastic style: The main purpose of this is to let Rule Of Cool reign
supreme. The film opens on a terrorist base being blown up to the opening riff
from Dire Straits’ Money For Nothing with some pretty cheap CGI rubble forming
the opening credits. It is here that the grinning started and it didn’t leave
my face for the entirety of this film. From the bombastic fight scenes to the
sly wit of the dialogue, this shows a pretty hefty triumph of style over
substance. Not to say that this has no substance to it at all, as I dare say
that the more dramatic moments are handled well by our cast; just that you can
tell where the emphasis has been placed. The action scenes show the kind of
over-the-top ultraviolence that Tarantino has wet dreams over, when he’s not
indulging in his foot fetish porn that is, with a lot of flashy and pretty
grisly brawling that makes great use of more athletic movements to create fights that are real spectacles to behold. The camera work and editing may be a bit too hectic for some viewers, but thankfully this film knows where
and when to place its fight scenes and doesn’t blow its load too early at any
point. When this film gets into its stride on the action, like in the
church brawl or the massive fire fight at Valentine’s base, it’s an orgy of carnage
candy. True, due to the nature of the story and the villain’s plan, some of the
fight scenes have a pretty grim undertone to them, but it’s that overblown that it is easy to
overlook if it becomes too uncomfortable. I mean, it’s rare that I can get
this excited over a fireworks display, but when it happens like it does in this
movie it’s hard to argue with.

All in all, this is an insanely fun watch. The characters
are great, the acting stays on point, the fight scenes are outstanding and the
writing wears a lot of its influences on its sleeve while doing its damnedest to
make them proud as well as make them laugh no matter where they lie. Given
how some of my favourite films of all time are very much style over substance, I loved seeing a film accomplish it with as much panache as it does here. Purely on
its entertainment value, and how well it succeeded in its stylistic endeavors,
this film managed to surpass Birdman on my list. I cannot recommend this movie
enough for appreciators of great action mixed with a roguish sense of humour.

Tuesday, 3 February 2015

You’d be hard-pressed to find a more versatile actor working
today than Johnny Depp. Yeah, he’ll have a couple of auto-pilot roles like in
The Tourist with Angelina Jolie, but when he’s on-point he can transform
himself on screen: Jack Sparrow, Edward Scissorhands, Willy Wonka, Ed Wood,
even Guy Lapointe; say what you will about the quality of the writing for each
of these roles, and it is varied between them no doubt, but these alone show
the kind of range that some actors would give all their Golden Globes to get. But
even the best of actors can appear in duds; how does he follow up his
spellbindingly bizarre performance as Lapointe in Tusk? Time to find out; this
is Mortdecai.

The plot: Charlie Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) is a
faux-aristocratic art dealer on the verge of bankruptcy. His friend Inspector
Martland (Ewan McGregor), in exchange for continuing to turn a blind eye to his
shadier dealings as well as help scrub his financial debt, enlists Mortdecai to
help recover a Goya painting that was stolen from a restorer. With the help of
his manservant Jock (Paul Bettany) and the ire of his wife Johanna (Gwyneth
Paltrow), he sets out to recover the painting, even if he may have his own
plans for it.

Immediately upon seeing Johnny Depp’s performance in the
trailer, one thing sprang to the mind: British store-brand Inspector Clouseau.
Not even the real Clouseau at that, but rather the Steve Martin abomination
claiming to be him. I went into this film with the preconception that we were
going to see a lot of unfunny upward failing, and that is exactly what we get
concerning his character. He’s meant to pull off a lot of mock charm, in that
he isn’t actually as clever or useful as he thinks he is but he’s still
charming in spite of it, or perhaps even because
of it. Here though, fake or not, he has about as much charm and likability as a
bowl of curdled milk. Not that the rest of the cast do much better, though.
Gwyneth Paltrow and Ewan McGregor are just average in their roles, not doing a
whole lot to stand out or engage; I will admit that McGregor does get a couple
of funny quips here and there, which is far more than Depp is given in this
movie, and he has the right delivery to make the little good material he gets
count. The biggest offence in terms of the cast, even considering Johnny Depp’s
rather woeful portrayal here, is Jeff Goldblum. Yeah, Jeff “Brundlefly”
Goldblum is in this movie as American art dealer Milton Krampf and he is
completely wasted here. None of his awkward deliveries or adorkable qualities
are on display here and he manages all of one decent line in the whole running
time. This is stunt casting if ever I saw it; big pile of shit, indeed.

Easily, the standout in the cast is Paul Bettany as Jock,
who is pretty damn good here. He carries his role with some decent blunt
delivery of his dialogue that adds on some laughs, nice chemistry with Depp
that at least makes the obvious contrast work as well as can be expected, and
his fight scenes may be short but fun all the same. Hell, at times it seems
like his character is self-aware and knows how crap the movie he’s in is, like
when he gets very visibly irritated at a running gag of Mortdecai of asking him
“Will it be alright in the end?” numerous times throughout the film. When all
of this adds up together, we get a character who should have been reserved for
a better film. Actually, they wouldn’t even need to go that far; just change
the framing so that the focus of the story is Jock as the main character
instead. As it stands, however, he is the only character worth watching in this
movie.

Rarely do I see/hear a writing that is this devoid of laughter. Then again, give a man a running gag about
how bad the main character’s moustache looks and it’s unlikely that he can
salvage it. Well, unless your name is Edgar Wright and even then I’d be
skeptical until I saw it with my own eyes. Aside from the dumb running gags,
this film tries its hardest to have some witty repartee between the characters
but instead it comes across more like the personification of wit put out a
restraining order on the cast and crew. When The Wedding Ringer is getting more
laughs than your movie, there might be a few things you have to think over as a
filmmaker. Not that the sucky writing is limited to just the dialogue, however,
as the plot is plodding and never latches on to the audience, instead just
pulls them along for the ride like a dog on its leash. It might have helped if
every scene didn’t go by the numbers depending on which characters were
on-screen, but then again that is a bit beyond this film. Oh, and as an added
bonus, they somehow managed to get Mark Ronson, a serious musical heavyweight
in my books, and make his music sound dull to the point where I physically can’t
recall a single track. At least in other films, even those far worse than this,
I was able to recollect some kind of rhythm from the soundtrack. Thankfully,
the rest of the world is busy focusing on Uptown Funk to even pay any attention
to his work here, so hopefully no-one will notice the weaksauce at play here.

All in all, this is a bad movie by all accounts but it’s bad
in all of the boring ways, in that it isn’t even worth it for the crap factor.
The only thing that makes this tepid display of humour-like run-off watchable
is Paul Bettany, who at least gives us some consistent entertainment either through
the action scenes or the dry delivery of his lines. Fortunately, he’ll get the
chance to be in something of quality later this year as he’s going to be
playing The Vision in Avengers: Age Of Ultron; there is some justice in this
world. As for the movie, it’s better than The Quarantine Hauntings as this at
least looks like a film, but it’s not as good as Dumb And Dumber To, which
legitimately gave me more laughs. I almost want to recommend this just for
Bettany, but he unfortunately isn’t enough to save this thing.

As always, feel free to leave a comment below with your own
thoughts on the movie.

Monday, 2 February 2015

In my now-yearly tradition of spooling through the Oscar nominees as if I gave a pea or squib about what the Academy actually thinks, this one's inclusion let loose one of the frankly uglier stereotypes surrounding the Oscars from my mind. Essentially, the story goes that the Academy is far more favourable towards films that focus on illnesses that weaken the body or the mind; anything involving a wheelchair or mental abnormalities are shoe-ins. Whether this is accurate or not, the simple fact is that these stories do connect with people; we have a capacity for sympathy, despite what the world of bro-douche-comedies may want us to think, and these films do register more with us than others. Add to that how the subject is one of mankind's most unique scientific voices and then it hits harder. Is this just simple Oscar bait? Only one way to find out: This is The Theory Of Everything.

The plot: Following Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne)’s
tenure at Cambridge University as he prepares his thesis on black holes, he
meets his future wife Jane (Felicity Jones) at a party and the two hit it off.
As Stephen is diagnosed with motor neuron disease and his body begins to
weaken, Jane stands by his side and supports him in his effort to continue his
study of the universe and how it all began.

As someone who frequents the world of internet snark about
films, I have heard many a joke about comparing particularly wooden performances
to Microsoft Sam. So, with that brand of cynicism coursing through my thoughts,
I was initially skeptical about how exactly Eddie Redmayne would portray
Hawking and how he would be written as a character. Bear in mind that I have
yet to see the 2004 TV movie Hawking with Benedict Cumberbatch, so I don’t have
any other portrayals to go on for this. However, within record time, Redmayne
puts all of those thoughts to rest. The man does wonders in the role, pulling
off the balance between his inner anguish over his debilitating illness and his
famous dry sense of humour. Watching this, you could easily buy that this is
the same man who had a cameo in a Monty Python live show to tell Brian Cox that
he was overthinking the Universe Song. In the first act, Redmayne is pretty
adorkable, channeling Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor by way of Hugh Grant.
Actually, that feels somewhat lampshaded here given the surprising amount of
Doctor Who references found here: From a sudden namedrop during a dinner party
to the frequent mentions of time travel to showing Hawking at home going “Exterminate!
Exterminate!”, whether the comparison was intended or not, it was kind of
glorious to see on screen for a die-hard Whovian like myself.

As Hawking’s illness debilitates his body further and
further, this could have very easily turned into pantomime given the boundless
supply of Hawking parodies we’ve seen in the last several years. But Redmayne,
with the help of some very humanizing dialogue, gives the role the dignity and
heart that is required to sell it on screen. The biggest contributor to this in
the writing department is the wise decision to keep Hawking’s sense of humour
intact. Hawking is well known for not taking himself too seriously in the real world and is perfectly willing to take
the piss out of himself, and the script here shows that well with quite a few
good jokes and funny character moments that help add to the emotional drama of
the proceedings. Just as an example of this, there is an exchange between
Hawking and his roommate Brian that is, essentially, a joke about how Hawking’s
‘equipment’ works and how he is able to have children. Through the
performances, the conversation stays on the side of jocular without descending
into nastiness of tone or subject matter.

Now, to discuss Jane Hawking and it is
here that the chinks in the production’s armour start to show themselves. Not
to say that Felicity Jones is bad in her role, far from it, but rather this
concerns how the script was adapted from Jane’s memoirs about her life with
Stephen. This film has a feel that we are seeing Stephen through Jane’s eyes,
both in and out of the film’s reality, which admittedly isn’t a bad thing.
Rather, the issue I take with this are the moments that focus solely on her,
specifically on her and her relationships in-story. Later on in the film, we
meet Jonathon (Charlie Cox) and, while we do
see a relationship grow between them, it feels like the writer Anthony McCarten
is holding back. There are a lot of scenes concerning her and Jonathon that don’t
firmly establish anything but just come across like McCarten is treating any
possibility of an affair with kid gloves. Sure, this makes some level of sense
considering we are, again, watching a film slanted towards her point of view,
but that purported need to not commit to the juicier details of the
relationship hurt this film somewhat. Maybe it was out of a want not to gain
the ire of the real-life Hawkings, but it detracts from the film nonetheless.
Hell, even Stephen’s relationship with his second wife, Elaine, is treated with
a lot of Vaseline lens and kind of glossed over with only the bare minimum of
details included. Now, this might not seem like that big an issue since this is
a film focusing on Stephen Hawking… except, at least partially, it isn’t. It is
being marketed, and written now that I think about it, with emphasis on the
relationship between Stephen and Jane, and without proper inclusion of the less
pleasant details, I can’t help but think that this isn’t being completely
honest about its subject matter.

On a minor note, or relatively minor given what I’ve just
mentioned, the visuals at work here could have used some work. There is a
running motif throughout the film of winding back the clock, coinciding with
Hawking’s own goal of learning what happened at the beginning of time, and for
the most part it’s done okay. We see a lot of spinning and swirling images
which add to it, and even some of the other shots look gorgeous like when
Hawking looks at his fire through a hole in his jumper. However, it feels like
more could have been done with the visuals, especially considering what we see
the filmmakers are capable of doing. The winding clock imagery is still good,
don’t get me wrong, but much like the focus on the relationships of the
characters it feels like the filmmakers are restraining themselves.

All in all, this is a drama in the same vein of Still Alice
where the main performance is what anchors the film, although this time around
the writing also does well at complimenting the actors to breathe humour and
heart into the production to give extra punch to the rather tragic story of one
of our foremost scientists. Eddie Redmayne managed to negate all mockery that
is come before him and deliver a portrayal of Hawking that is amazingly
accurate to the man himself. Supported by a great cast and some eye-catching
visuals, this is a very good watch even if it feels like it’s holding out on us
at times. It’s better than American Sniper, as I definitely connected more with
the main character here, but it falls short of Still Alice, where the more
dramatic moments hit harder for me personally. This is worth checking out for
Redmayne’s portrayal alone, but worth sticking around for the witty writing; it may be Oscar bait but that shouldn't detract from seeing it.